It's Like One Piece Is Ripping Off Disney And Tim Burton

On 2ch, Japan's largest bulletin, a thread popped up with the title, "Concrete Proof of One Piece's Plagiarism lulz". In this thread, an image showed seemed to detail how One Piece continues to knock off Disney and Tim Burton. Or does it?

In the above gallery, you can see comparisons from that thread. Most of the Disney examples are from either the 1989 film The Little Mermaid or the 1992 film Aladdin. There are a few from the 1993 film Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

One Piece did not begin its run until August 1997; though, it did make an appearance the year before, in 1996.

Yes, some of the comparisons are fairly clear, and it's easy to see the outside influences in One Piece. The manga's creator, Eiichiro Oda, has never been shy about professing his love for other manga or cartoons.

But, if I had never seen these comparisons, I'm not sure if I would have drawn them myself. Influences are only a bad thing if they result to dull, stifled copying. Influences are at their most beneficial if they are reworked and result in the creation of something new. Reading One Piece isn't like reading The Little Mermaid or Aladdin — or even Oda's beloved Dragon Ball. It's like reading One Piece. It is its own thing.

If you are a One Piece fan, and you haven't seen these comparisons before, they're fascinating and do open up a new level of appreciation of what Oda has created. Good manga artists copy. Great ones steal.

If you look hard enough you can find evidence that somethings ripping something else off, sure there are some similarities but theres nothing that really says "ripping off" rather than "inspired by" in most of the pictures shown.

Manga has been riffing off American pop culture for yonks! Has anyone read the electric tale of pikachu - Ash rides round with pikachu in his basket like it's ET! Its hard to tell if its parody or a cop out, from the looks here it seems more like parody.

...this article is terrible. The comparisons are, putting it mildly, weak and based solely on small vague physical similarities.

Not to mention the fact that Disney has made an empire through taking stories from the public sphere and making them exclusive intellectual property. But nah, let's not even make mention of...Aladdin, Pinocchio, Hercules, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, ad infinitum.

There are some similarities yes, but art rarely exists without influence from other places. Disney itself took the ideas for many of its movies from existing tales and stories (*cough* Kimba the White Lion *cough*). There are also many tropes and common mythologies and illustrations, not to mention real life creatures and objects that a lot of artists borrow inspiration from and adapt into their work.

Story time! I went to an all-girls’ school. My friends and I had that special bond of closeness that apparently comes with synced-up periods and measuring the length of each other’s winter leg hair.
This, obviously, led to a brief era of trying to catch one of the others unawares with the most impressive, most unexpected spank possible. We’re talking sneaking up behind each other in the hallway and laying one down that made the earth shake. If I couldn’t read your palm from the imprint, you weren’t doing a good enough job.